Raxio data centres pass $380 million in capital
Africa’s Raxio grows capital as demand surges, Roha, Meridiam increase their stakes
#Africa #datacentres - Pan-African data centre operator Raxio Group has passed $380 million in committed capital after shareholders Roha, a US-based infrastructure investor, and French infrastructure firm Meridiam increased their stakes, up from a previous $350 million base. The fresh equity follows a $100 million financing package the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation provided last year, alongside debt funding from Proparco and the Emerging Africa & Asia Infrastructure Fund. Raxio said contracted power capacity grew sixfold in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period last year, driven by rising demand for cloud and AI workloads.
SO WHAT? - Africa’s data centre market is still tiny by global standards, but McKinsey projects installed capacity needs to grow from 0.4 gigawatts today to as much as 2.2 gigawatts by 2030, unlocking at least $20 billion in new revenue. Raxio’s sixfold jump in contracted power, and a growing pipeline of 10-megawatt-plus deployments, suggests that growth is taking place. Meanwhile, new demand from AI workloads seem to be pushing operators to build denser, higher-performance facilities.
KEY POINTS
Raxio Group surpassed $380 million in committed capital as shareholders Roha and Meridiam increased their equity stakes, building on a previous $350 million capital base.
The new equity follows a $100 million financing package secured from the IFC last year, plus debt funding from Proparco and the Emerging Africa & Asia Infrastructure Fund.
Raxio operates Tier III-certified, carrier-neutral data centres in Uganda, Ethiopia, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire and Angola, with a planned expansion into Tanzania under development.
The company signed contracts for six times more power during the first half of 2026 than in the same period in 2025.
According to Raxio, it is seeing a growing pipeline of deployments requiring 10 megawatts of capacity and above, larger than past project sizes.
The company is increasing rack densities across its data centre facilities to support higher-performance computing and AI workloads.
McKinsey expects Africa’s data centre capacity to grow from 0.4 gigawatts today to between 1.5 and 2.2 gigawatts by 2030, unlocking at least $20 billion in new value-chain revenue.
Raxio says it has built more greenfield data centres in Africa than any other independent operator, and is exploring renewable energy integration alongside grid power as demand scales.
ZOOM OUT - McKinsey expects Africa's data centre capacity to grow from just 0.4 GW today to between 1.5 and 2.2 GW by 2030, requiring and estimated $10 billion to $20 billion in new investment. The firm projects that the investment would unlock a revenue pool of $20 billion to $30 billion across the value chain. However, McKinsey also cautions that Africa won't follow the growth path of other regions. It expects demand to develop unevenly across the continent, with outcomes hinging on power reliability, regulatory conditions and infrastructure readiness in each market. The firm says that Africa’s data centre build-out will be very much shaped by local realities rather than any single continent-wide model. Therefore, investors, operators and policymakers needing to consider the dynamics for each country they enter separately.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
Source: RAXIO